Crash - Part Four (2 page)

“We later found out that the pill had not gone through all the required testing. PharmaTech had bribed and leaned on a few people at the FDA to get approval. Once they had that, they shoved the drug out to market.”

“I’m sure I’m going to sound like a jerk now,” John said, “but this doesn’t explain why you would give them our information. If you hate them, why help them?”

“We didn’t help them.”

“You gave them information on our patent,” I said. “And you messed up a big contract for us. That was plenty of help, by my standards.”

“Not really,” Kerry said with a shrug. “I altered the patent design enough so that PharmaTech thinks it has something useful, but it doesn’t. I admit we blew the contract with the military for you, but trust me, that is going to work in your favor when the time comes.”

I looked at John but he just shrugged, none the wiser than I was. Kerry was speaking more cryptically than I liked, so I turned to Carter for better answers. “I assume you were doing it out of some sense of loyalty to Bella, but what was the point of the whole scheme?”

Carter sat forward in his seat and interlaced his fingers. “Yes. I formed the company to be the official investor. Kerry needed to be separate so that there was no doubt she did what she did on behalf of PharmaTech. We’re going to take them down, Emily. But we’ll need your help.”

“Everything I did, legally speaking, I did on behalf of PharmaTech, and that means they are responsible. They stole your patent, interfered with a military contract, and generally screwed you over in other ways you don’t even know about yet.”

“So, your big plan is for us to sue them and get damages? How is that going to punish them? They can afford it. And by the time we’ve paid the legal fees, that will hardly benefit us.”

“Damages aren’t the main goal,” Carter said. “We just needed a strong case that can get us into federal court—that’s why we made sure there were lots of different issues at play. Patent law, contract law, interference with a military contract. We could take this case into any court in the country because of that.”

“But we don’t want to end up in court, anyway,” Kerry said. “Once the case gets started, we can start asking all sorts of questions about their business affairs. With a bit of luck, we can get information about their bribery in the drug trials and then leak that to the public.”

“The only way you can hurt people like this is through their wallets,” Carter said. “This will make their stock price crash and burn like you wouldn’t believe.”

“In other words,” John said, “Emily and I are just the unlucky ones stuck in the middle of your little vendetta?”

Carter nodded. “Sorry.”

“Well,” John said, standing up. “This has been fun and all, but I don’t want anything to do with this. What about you, Emily?”

“I agree with John,” I said. “I’m still trying to process all this, but what I can comprehend is that you have used our business to suit your own ends.” I kept the topic of conversation on business while John was present, but I knew this would affect my relationship with Carter too. It had to. This wasn’t a typical romantic betrayal with another woman, but it was still a lie, and our fledgling relationship had seen its fair share of them already.

“We still need you,” Kerry said. “Your company has to be the one to sue them.”

“Why the hell should we do that?” I asked. “This isn’t our fight.”

“She’s right, Kerry,” Carter said, taking a long sip of his drink. “We have to leave it now and let them move on with their business.”

Kerry threw a look at Carter that even made me lean back in my seat. “Carter, we have to—”

“Drop it Kerry.”

“Uh, hell no,” John said. “Whatever it is, you are going to tell us, or we
will
be suing someone and it won’t be PharmaTech.”

“You want to do this as much as we do,” Kerry said. “Well, Emily—you do, at least.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The problem with the birth control pill is that it could mess up the body’s nervous system,” Kerry explained. “You can probably understand it better than me, but basically, certain triggers could react with the drug and you would lose all control of your body.”

“What type of triggers?” I asked.

“Certain alcoholic drinks. Not mainstream drinks, for the most part—that’s how PharmaTech managed to keep this secret. They didn’t tell doctors about this, so Bella had no idea that drinking would cause so many problems.”

“What does this have to do with me?” I asked, trying to remain calm. I was ready to storm out, and Kerry’s sob story was dragging on far too long.

“That’s what caused the accident, Emily,” she said. “The drugs produced by PharmaTech wreaked havoc on Bella’s nerves that night and sent her off the road. She shouldn’t have been drinking of course—and the drug doesn’t excuse her behavior after the accident—but that doesn’t change the fact that it was a reaction to the drug that caused the crash. You need to help us get back at PharmaTech because that company is responsible for your brother’s death.”

“Do you have any idea what you want to do?” John asked the next morning.

After the conversation with Carter and Kerry, I had insisted we both go our separate ways to give us some time to think. I knew I needed time alone, and John probably needed it even more. This was his company too, and the problem with PharmaTech was much more my issue than his. I reminded him that we didn’t have to make every decision together—we weren’t a married couple—and that he needed time to dwell on it as much as I did.

“Not really,” I lied. I knew exactly what I wanted to do; the hard part was convincing myself it was the right thing for all parties. I wanted—no, needed—to take down PharmaTech. How could I not, after what they did? But that didn’t make it the right decision. I had no idea what I would be getting into. More importantly, I wasn’t sure if I could live with myself if it all went tits-up and I took John down with me.

“We don’t
need
to do anything,” I said. “I shouldn’t let personal issues affect the business, especially not when I have a business partner.”

“I’m quite capable of making my own decisions,” John said tersely. He didn’t look like he’d had much sleep and his hair was unusually disheveled. “I agree, though. We don’t need to do anything. We were chugging along quite nicely before they got involved, and I’m quite sure we can cope without them if they disappear—uh, business-wise, at least.”

“My relationship with Carter cannot come into this,” I said, and I meant every word. “We have to make a business decision, first. After that, I will worry about my love life.”

“I
would
like to see PharmaTech suffer,” John admitted. “None of what Kerry and Carter told us changes the fact that they were using our information for their own ends. And if all that stuff about the drug is true, then that company is every bit as bad as we thought and then some.”

I’d tried not to think too much about the faulty birth control pills. Not because it reminded me of how close Carter was to Bella, although that didn’t help, but because it made me angry with PharmaTech. I couldn’t let anger cloud my judgment right now; this was a life-changing decision for John and me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What for?”

“This is all my fault. If it hadn’t been for me and my past, none of this would have happened. Kerry and Carter only started playing around with our business because of me. I wish we’d never done that presentation at the conference. I’m sorry I inflicted all this on you.”

“There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t even know where to start. For one thing, if it weren’t for you, then there would be no business in the first place. I’m just a tech guy. I wouldn’t have known where to start with all this. If I’m honest, without having known you and seen the trouble you went through with your leg, I doubt I would have even been interested in this type of business. But more importantly, I can assure you that PharmaTech would have come after us, anyway. In the end, Kerry was the one to feed them information, but if she hadn’t been around, they would have got it some other way.”

“You don’t know that,” I replied, though I was grateful for his confidence in me.

“Oh, come on. This is a company that bribed people to get a drug on the market without proper testing. People have died because of this company, so don’t go blaming yourself.”

I sighed and slouched down onto the sofa. I didn’t think well in silence and I needed some background noise. I grabbed the remote and switched on the TV. I hardly ever watched it and usually just relied on Netflix or some other streaming service for my binge-watching pleasure. Still, at least there was some noise around me other than my gears turning.

“Sounds like we are leaning toward fighting them,” John said. He sat down next to me.

“Yes, but are we doing this for the right reasons? You know this could end in a courtroom.”

“Well, it’s a good job Judge Judy is on TV right now, then. Maybe we can learn something.”

I laughed louder than the joke probably warranted, but it was nice to smile again. I had a feeling Judge Judy would be on our side, but I couldn’t see PharmaTech agreeing to have such a big dispute decided on national television.

I had just gotten interested in the case at hand—some former couple arguing about whether the woman should give an engagement ring back—when a commercial break interrupted the show.

“If there’s one thing worse than daytime television,” John said, “it’s the adverts on daytime television.”

We were watching images of a young family frolicking in the sun and enjoying life thanks to some miracle drug that had cured their daughter’s illness. The long list of grim-sounding side effects seems to contradict the happiness of the family, but the whole idea was that you weren’t supposed to think about the negatives, I guess.

The writing at the bottom of the screen was hard to read because the text was white on a white background, but at the end of the commercial, I caught a glimpse of the company that developed the drug. It was none other than PharmaTech.

“Did you see that?” John asked.

I nodded, and then realized John wasn’t looking at me. “Yes. I saw.”

“I know this sounds stupid, but in all this I kind of forgot they were still pushing drugs out there. I’ve been seeing them as our rivals—and they are—but they are much more than that.”

“You’re right. They’re marketing drugs to be used on children. How do we know those drugs weren’t pushed through the approval process the same way the one that killed Bella was?”

“Are you thinking what I am thinking?” John asked.

I turned and looked at him before giving a slow, deliberate nod. “Let’s go get them.”

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Carter asked. “Both of you? Because you shouldn’t underestimate what you are getting into. Kerry downplays it sometimes, but this is huge.”

I had waited another day before messaging Carter with our decision. We figured that if we still hadn’t had any second thoughts after a night’s sleep, then it must mean we had come to the right decision. Carter invited us round to his place again to discuss the next steps, and he’d insisted we get there before Kerry so he could talk to us alone.

“I’m with Kerry in all this, obviously,” he continued, “but you don’t have to be. There’s still time to back out.”

“We’re sure, Carter,” I said. “We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“But don’t go thinking you’ve gotten away with the whole lying-to-us thing,” John said quickly. “I’m still pissed about that, and you can be damn sure Emily will have some choice words to say to you in private, as well.”

I nodded, but after making sure that John couldn’t see my face, I smiled at Carter. We’d already had a few conversations over texts where he apologized profusely and swore I knew everything now. Much to my surprise, I hadn’t even been that mad at him. Maybe if he’d used me and our relationship to get information on the business it would have been unforgivable, but he’d rarely asked me for any details and had seemed completely disinterested.

During his apology, he told me he had compartmentalized the PharmaTech issue from the relationship with me, and looking back on our time together, I could completely believe that. Plus, there was some comfort in seeing how far Carter would go for someone he cared about. If he would do that for Bella, someone he gave up loving a long time ago, I could only imagine how far he would go for me now.

"First of all," I said once Kerry had arrived, "John and I will be making all the key decisions."

“We will listen to what you want to do, of course,” John said. “But if we don’t like it, we don’t do it. It’s our company that will be doing the suing, and once we do this, our company name will be on all the official complaints filed with the court. I’m still not entirely comfortable with that, but at least we are the ones filing the suit and not being sued.”

“We completely understand,” Carter said. “Don’t we, Kerry?”

Kerry nodded. I wished she would be a little less standoffish with us, but she seemed to like staying behind an emotional barrier. The only times her voice betrayed any emotion was when she was talking about PharmaTech.

“So, how does this all play out, then?” I asked. “What’s the first step?”

“First, we need to get a lawyer,” Kerry said. “I know some good ones who have experience in this kind of complex litigation.”

“We already have a lawyer,” I said. “Scott’s good, and he has looked after us so far.”

Despite our speech about how John and I would be making the decisions, Kerry looked to Carter for his opinion on the matter.

Carter shrugged. “This Scott guy, he works for a big firm, right?”

“Pretty big, yes.”

“Then I’m sure that’s fine. As long as they don’t have a conflict of interest by representing PharmaTech in other matters, I am okay with it.”

“This way, we keep the number of people involved at a minimum,” John said. “Scott already knows some of the details, anyway, because he filed the patent applications.”

“All right,” Kerry relented. “We’ll keep your lawyer. Unless this Scott guy has any better suggestions, we will try to initiate a lawsuit in military court, first. That will never work—they will have the case removed and sent to another court—but it’s a good first play to get them worried. Companies like PharmaTech have huge contracts with the U.S. government and won’t want their name involved in a dispute with the military.”